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PSYCHOANALYSIS OF FREUD AND ADLER 

OR 
SEX-DETERMINISM AND CHARACTER- 
FORMATION 1 



By Francis Cecil Sumner 



I 

The question of sex-determinism is both biological and psy- 
chological. The psychological aspect of the problem is of very 
great import for our knowledge of the variance in human 
character- type. As finger-prints of not two individuals are 
exactly alike according to Bertillon, so also not two individuals 
are completely alike in character or diathesis. This infinity of 
individual differences signifies that according to the bisexual 
theory of Fliess (Zwischenreich) , Halban (pseudohermaphrodi- 
tismus secondarius) , and Hirschfeld (Zwischenstufentkeorie) 
there are no two individuals in whom the particular fusion of 
masculinity and femininity exists identical for each. Thus in 
a dynamic sense, character or diathesis is the particular fusion 
of masculinity and femininity within the particular individual. 

Every individual is a duplex, i. e., both masculine and 
feminine: — a psychic if not a somatic pseudohermaphrodite. 
In each bisexual ensemble there is a dominant and a recessive 
sexuality. It is this dominant sexuality whether masculine 
or feminine which is more conspicuous in the individuality and 
which leads common parlance to speak of an individual as male 
or female, unmindful of the deeper complexity of human 
nature. That there is no absolute male or female but only 
approximations thereto involves the formation of a working 
hypothesis. Thus the relative sex-determinism within the 
individual character is a matter of the ratio of masculinity 
to femininity within such a one. This amounts to saying 
in the form of a law that in man the increase in masculinity is 
inversely proportional to the decrease in femininity and in 
woman the increase of femininity is inversely proportional to 
the decrease in masculinity. 

These generalizations already set forth by Otto Weininger 
("Sex and Character") lack merely the biological and psycho- 

1 A dissertation submitted to the faculty of Clark University, Worcester, 
Mass., in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor 
of Philosophy, and accepted on the recommendation of Dr. G. Stanley 
Hall. 



\ 



2 PSYCHOANALYSIS OF FREUD AND ADLER 

logical support which shall herewith be presented. For sake 
of clearness this evidence may be divided into two categories: 

1. The Phylogenetic ; 2. The Ontogenetic. 

i. The Phylogenetic — When the principle of Mendelian 
inheritance is applied to the evolution of the two sexes the 
results are significant for the bisexual theory. The so-called 
male and female of the species have descended from a remote 
common ancestor in the micro-organic realm. According to 
Belfield this far off ancestor of the two sexes while hermaphro- 
ditic in the main, nevertheless bore more points of similarity 
to our so-called female than to our so-called male and for that 
reason he prefers to indicate femaleness as the dominant 
Mendelian character; maleness as the recessive Mendelian 
character. From this primitive common parent of the two 
sexes were evolved the two lines: one in the masculine direc- 
tion and one in the feminine direction. The respective goals 
of these two evolving lines are conceived as approximations 
to absolute masculinity and absolute femininity. After the 
two sexes were evolved, i. e., after the division into male and 
female according to the primary sex-character, there reca- 
pitulated in each of the two sexes the evolutionary process 
which had gone on before in the evolution of the two sexes. 
The masculine line again differentiates itself into the more 
masculine as recessive line and into a more feminine as domi- 
nant line; the feminine line differentiates itself into the more 
masculine as recessive line and into a more feminine as domi- 
nant line. This secondary differentiation deals with secon- 
dary, tertiary, etc., sex-characters. A genealogical tree of the 
evolution of the sexes based on Mendelian inheritance might 
here serve to clear up the foregoing. 

Thus far have evolved four great bisexual character- types : 

1. The males in whom masculinity predominates (M 2 ). 

2. The males in whom femininity predominates (Mi). 

3. The females in whom masculinity predominates (F 2 ). 

4. The females in whom femininity predominates (Fi). 
It is proper here to insert some of the biological evidence 

for this genealogy of the sex-types. Belfield claims that as the 
unicellular organisms or protozoa are the most primitive 
ancestors of man so also their reproductive life is the evolu- 
tionary prototype of present-day reproductive life of the 
higher animals including man. He with Thomson, Geddes 
and others trace the reproductive life in the following three 
stages : 

1. Asexual reproduction. At this stage hunger and repro- 
duction, two of the most primitive instincts, were closely 
bound up in the one micro-organism; and here is found the 



Gift 
Unr^rsit? 



PSYCHOANALYSIS OF FREUD AND ADLER 




MALE 



MF 

HERMAPHRODITIC COMMON ANCESTOR 

primitive hermaphroditic A nlage of the two sexes, for not yet 
had two differently sexed organisms appeared and reproduc- 
tion consisted of parthenogenesis, autofecundation, self- 
fertilization or cell-cleavage. Such a process is to be seen 
today in what remains over in certain varieties of shell-fish, 
female plant lice and in cell-cleavage itself. 

2. Bisexual reproduction. Towards the dawn of the 
metazoa evolved the male-cell and the female-cell within the 
body of the hermaphroditic parent to be seen today in such 
extant remains as the earth-worm, the snail and the oyster. 
Thomson and Geddes assign two major biological reasons for 
the division into male and female germ-cells: the biological 
advantage of cross-fertilization ; and the greater specialization 
of the female apparatus. Of this stage Belfield writes: "For 
in many animal-types there is no male; when he does appear, 
he is at first merely a parasite upon or within the body of the 
female." 

3. Unisexual reproduction. This stage but continues the 
evolution of the two germinal sexes begun in the second stage. 
The male cell evolves in its direction and the female specializes 
in its direction. For reproduction is requisite the conjugation 
of male and female organisms. 



4 PSYCHOANALYSIS OF FREUD AND ADLER 

The general directions of the two evolving lines are: one 
in the direction of absolute masculinity and the other in the 
direction of absolute femininity. Many students have arisen 
to point out the major sex-differences between the masculine 
and feminine lines of evolution. Among them are of especial 
note Ellis, Moebius, Bucura, Blair Bell, Heymann, Finot, 
Moll, Thomson and Geddes. Both Fouillee and Walter Heape 
compare the male individual to the spermatozoon and the 
female individual to the ovum. "The male is active and 
roaming; he hunts for his partner and is an expender of energy ; 
the female is passive, sedentary and is a conservator of 
energy." Thomson and Geddes diagrammatically summarize 
the major biopsychic sex-differences thus: 

Male Female 

Sperm-producer Egg-producer 

With less expensive reproduction With much more expensive repro- 
duction 

More intense metabolism Less intense metabolism 

Relatively more katabolic Relatively more anabolic 

Often with shorter life Often with longer life 

Often more brilliantly colored and Often quieter in color and plainer 

more decorative 

Rising to more intense outbursts of Capable of more patient endurance 

energy 

More impetuous and experimental More persistent and conservative 

More divergent from youthful type Nearer the youthful type 

Often more variable Often less variable 

Making more of sex-gratification Making more of the family 

More combative Consolidating the family 

Moebius seeks mainly to indicate the skeletal differences 
between the sexes and incidentally to dwell upon the roving 
disposition (Wanderlust), aggressivity, of the male in con- 
tradistinction to the homing-instinct (Heimtrieb), maternal 
love, tender feeling, dance and music impulses of the female. 
Weininger refers to the male tendency as the "liberating 
impulse" while to the female tendency as the "uniting im- 
pulse." Adler refers to the male tendency as the aggressive 
will-to-power, superiority impulse, while to the female ten- 
dency as passivity, inferiority impulse. Freud speaks of the 
feminine tendency as the love impulse while Ellis goes so far 
as to say, "A man is a man to his very thumbs and a woman 
is a woman to her little toes." Bucura is not alone when he 
points out that the female is more emotional, more uncon- 
scious, more intuitive, more aesthetic, more infantile. 

Suffice it to say that the two evolving lines are diametri- 
cally opposite in character or tend in that direction. In cross- 
fertilization, as is all human reproduction, the male line merges 
with the female line, i. e., in the germ-cell fusion a recapitula- 



PSYCHOANALYSIS OF FREUD AND ADLER 5 

tion of the primitive hermaphroditic stage of unicellular 
organisms and the evolution of the new individual traverses 
the evolutionary stages of the remote development of the two 
sexes, the dominant sexuality gaining the ascendency. Not 
only do the primary sex-characters contend for the mastery 
but also the secondary, tertiary, etc., sex-characters autono- 
mously do likewise. If the sex-determinant is merely the 
x-chromosome, there is indeed a great complexity underlying 
it the nature of which can be gleaned from the following 
complex study of ontogeny. 

2. The Ontogenetic — Not only does the Mendelian principle 
when applied to the phylogeny of the sexes indicate the com- 
mon ancestry of the two sexes, but also it goes far in explaining 
the presence of heterologous secondary, tertiary sex-charac- 
ters in hermaphrodites proper and ordinary human beings or 
pseudohermaphrodites. The study of hermaphrodites proper 
reveals in bold relief the presence of heterologous sex-charac- 
ters in combination. Likewise it reveals the similarity of 
every individual to a hermaphrodite in that an individual is 
neither completely male nor completely female but rather a 
combination of the two with one more dominant than the 
other. Thus in technical language every individual is a 
bisexual, i. e., a pseudohermaphrodite if not a hermaphrodite 
proper. 

The following chart may illustrate the ratio of maleness to 
femaleness and the relation of distribution of hermaphrodites 
proper to pseudohermaphrodites: 




in which the triangle ABD equals masculinity and the triangle 
BCD femininity. The overlapping of the two triangles rep- 
resents at each point, whether moving toward the right or 
toward the left, the relatively normal ratio of bisexuality in 
any particular individual. Within the lines AB and CD are 
included hypothetically all human beings. To the left, mascu- 
line individuals or individualities predominate; and to the 
right, feminine individuals or individualities predominate. 



6 PSYCHOANALYSIS OF FREUD AND ADLER 

Thus the numerical distribution of individuals may be indicat- 
ed by the camel-humped curve BEGE l D. In the region of G 
are hermaphrodites proper; in the regions of the humps E and 
E 1 are the bisexual monosexuals male and female respectively. 
In other words the dip in the curve between the two humps 
represents the true hermaphroditic bridge between the two 
so-called monosexuals. This bridge is the true atavistic 
regression to the primitive hermaphroditic common parent. 
Within each so-called monosexual group persists the evolution- 
ary struggle between male and female characters. Thus 
each individual, whether male or female as to the primary 
nature of the gonads, is secondarily bisexual or pseudoher- 
maphroditic. 

Here it is again fitting to insert biological and psychological 
evidence in support of the above-mentioned considerations. 
Krafft-Ebing, renowned sex-psychopathologist, writes: "The 
original bisexuality of the ancestors of the race, shown in the 
rudimentary organs of the male, could not fail to occasion 
functional if not organic reversions, when mental or physical 
manifestations were interfered with by disease or congenital 
defect." Elsewhere: "The individual being must pass also 
thru these grades of evolution. The psychophysical sexual 
difference runs parallel with the high level of the evolving 
process. The individual being must also itself pass thru these 
grades of evolution ; it is originally bisexual but in the struggle 
between the male and female elements either one or the other 
is conquered and a monosexual being is evolved which corres- 
ponds with the type of the present stage of evolution, but 
traces of the conquered sexuality remain." It is interesting to 
find a great physiologist, A. Biedl, maintaining a similar view- 
point: "The secondary sexual characters develop in a mascu- 
line or feminine direction, according as to whether the mascu- 
line or feminine internal secretory glands predominate. The 
occurrence of heterologous secretory sexual characters is 
explained by the supposition that the internal secretory por- 
tion of the sexual glands that belongs to the other sex obtains 
the upper hand." 

The recent discovery of and extended research in the 
internal or endocrinal glands have given a new impulse to the 
study of the relation they bear in sex-determination. There 
are numerous glands in the organism which have a two-fold 
function: their autonomous biological mission and their sub- 
servient co-operative mission to the primary sex-character — 
the gonads. For example, the mammillary gland which beside 
its proper functioning of lactation bears also the closely in- 
terrelated role to the ovaries. The stimulation of the mammil- 



PSYCHOANALYSIS OF FREUD AND ADLER 7 

lary glands not only stimulates them in growth and secretion 
but also stimulates ovarian secretion. The pituitary body or 
gland controls obesity and in females is closely interrelated 
with the gonads. So with the other endocrinal glands which 
underlie the several biological structures and functions of the 
organism the exact role of which is being investigated. Her- 
maphrodites offer the best field for the study of endocrinal 
activity. In hermaphrodites the activity of the internal 
glands is exaggerated or else heterosexual in a very conspicuous 
manner. 

Blair Bell ("The Sex Complex") and Bucura ("Die Ge- 
schlechtsunterschiede beim Menschen") have gained particu- 
lar prominence owing to their experimental studies of the func- 
tioning of the thymus, thyroid, parathyroid, hypophyseal, 
mammillary, pineal, suprarenal, pituitary glands in the post- 
natal sex-determination, especially as to psychic and somatic 
sex-characters. Blair Bell verifies his histological findings by 
the study of hermaphrodites. In the bisexual monosexual of 
today the functioning of a number of the internal glands 
may be that of the opposite sex, leading to the complexity of 
the general psychic character of the individual. 

As recently as 1918 Miss Mary O'Malley, clinical director 
of St. Elizabeth's Hospital, Washington, D. C, in an in- 
teresting and significant paper indicates the possibility of a 
symptomatology of such pathological polyglandular syn- 
dromes. Thus according to her investigation there are five 
major symptoms: 

1. A deviation of the anatomical configuration of the body, 
including to a degree faulty skeletal development. Under 
this symptom is classified the masculine or feminine character 
of the outline of the body, the pelvis, the larynx, the features, 
the shape of the hands and the feet. Quite an importance 
attaches to the conformation of the hand as whether feminine 
("type en long," acromegaly) or masculine ("type en large," 
gigantism). 

2. Adiposity or fatness. The presence of fatness — a 
feminine character — is symptomatic of heterosexual internal 
secretion in the male while leanness, a masculine trait, is 
symptomatic of heterosexual internal secretion in the female. 

3. A disturbance of the pilous system. Here is classified 
the masculine or feminine character of the hair as whether 
strong and coarse or light down, soft and nearly invisible; of 
the beard, the mustache, the hypertrichosis of the body, 
especially the stomach and chest. Thus the presence of a light 
beard or mustache in the female is indicative of underlying 
masculine endocrinal functioning while the absence of beard 



8 PSYCHOANALYSIS OF FREUD AND ADLER 

or mustache in the male is indicative of underlying feminine 
endocrinal activity. The etiology of hirsutism involves, 
besides the hyperfunctioning of the gonads, the anomalous 
functioning of other endocrinal glands. 

4. Disturbances of the genital function, such as of men- 
struation, and of the secondary sex-characters which resemble 
those of the opposite sex. Such disturbance of menstruation 
may include precocious menstruation, irregularities of men- 
struation, delay in the establishment of the menses, arrest 
of menstruation extending over long intervals. Here may be 
included anomalies of the external genitalia which shall be 
spoken of shortly and the alteration of the sexual bivalency 
from prepubertal masculinity or femininity to post-pubertal 
femininity or masculinity. 

5. Disturbance of the psychosexual development — psychic 
hermaphroditism which is manifested in the peculiar contrary 
sexual inclination to femininity and to masculinity or to 
heterosexuality and homosexuality. "The psychical anoma- 
lies are displayed in the behavior of the individuals and in 
the content of their mentally disordered thought and dis- 
sociation of ideas which is the expression of their unconscious 
strivings." 

The study of the comparative morphology of the two 
sexes points to the possibility of additional complexity as 
regards the maleness and femaleness of certain structures 
in the bisexual organism. Belfield illustrates this point in 
regard to the variations in morphology of the larynx. The 
male relatively differs an octave from the female as to the 
pitch of the voice in proportion to the greater length of the 
laryngeal cords. Feminine laryngeal cords differ only slightly 
from those of children in length. Hence the larger in appear- 
ance the so-called Adam's apple the more masculine the voice, 
provided the vocal cords are equally taut. However, mascu- 
line voices are frequently found among masculine women. 
Again Belfield points to the descendency of the male from a 
quasi-feminine or hermaphroditic common primitive ancestor 
of the two sexes as evidenced in the feminine rudimentary 
organs in man such as the supernumerary teats or as the 
normal male teats. Relatively the osseous and muscular 
structure of man varies from that of woman in accordance 
with the greater struggle for existence which man has had to 
face. This is also the case with head, skin and hair. Through 
phyletic use and disuse we have seen the pelvis relatively 
larger in the female than in the male. These characters 
are by no means absolutely transmitted through sex-linked 



PSYCHOANALYSIS OF FREUD AND ADLER 9 

inheritance, for in the bisexual we see the heterologous in- 
heritance of these very characters. The male may have soft 
skin and the female tough skin; the male may have a small 
head or a soft downy hair or large pelvic region or large 
buttocks and the female the contrary. 

Thus far we have seen the complexity of secondary and 
tertiary sex-characters in the character-complex. This 
complexity pushes even over into the sphere of the primary 
sex-character — the genital organs. Here as elsewhere the 
true hermaphrodite offers a splendid field for study. From 
such a study can be brought out in relief what exists in the 
bisexual monosexual in less clearly defined lines. Ernst 
Haeckel thus in his "Evolution of Man" points to the analo- 
gous relation between the female and male genitalia and 
suggests the probable hermaphroditic source. Accordingly 
the female clitoris is analogous to the male penis; the labia 
minora and majora to walls of the male scrotum; the vulvar 
cleavage to the suture in the male extending from near the 
anus over the scrotum up the dorsal side of the penis to the 
glans; the ovaries to the testes. In the baby boy the testes 
are up in the body and only fall down into the pockets of the 
scrotum sometime after birth. In hermaphrodites these 
characters of the genitalia above-mentioned are inherited 
in the disordered heterosexual fashion which called forth the 
name. In bisexual monosexuals these genital characters 
are also heterologous. Maeder points out two great types of 
woman, the masculine clitoris- type and the feminine womb- 
type, owing to the variation in the above-mentioned regards. 
The masculine or clitoris type is tomboyish, enjoying sports 
and making more of sex-gratification than the womb-type, 
who is passive and whose pleasure is in the fruit of the 
womb. 

Blair Bell has pushed his experimental study even over into 
the ovarian and testicular glands and finds so far that the 
secretion of these glands varies for different individuals. 
The greater the secretion of these analogous organs the nearer 
masculine the individual, whether male or female. Thus he 
points to women of hyper-secretive ovaries as incapable of 
even moral restraint. 

From the hermaphroditic standpoint the male is an en- 
semble of masculine and feminine characters, as likewise the 
female. The dominant masculinity or femininity in the 
bisexual ensemble determines the dominant psychic tendency 
of the individual either toward femininity or toward mas- 
culinity. This very point was of supreme importance to 
Adler ("Der psychische Hermaphroditismus im Leben und in 



10 PSYCHOANALYSIS OF FREUD AND ADLER 

der Neurose"). For him the most sickly diathesis, physical 
or psychical, is that one which lies in the middle ground 
between pure femininity and pure masculinity. Such a 
diathesis is an hermaphroditic one, that is, a vestige of the 
primitive hermaphroditic existence. Such an individual, 
like any vestigial organ, is subject on the physical side to 
weakness, corpulence, sickliness, awkward behavior, infantile 
ailments as enuresis, incontinentia alvi, flatulence, stuttering, 
short-windedness, vertigo, insufficiencies of the visual and 
auditory apparatus, congenital or early acquired deformities, 
striking ugliness, etc. ; on the psychic side to timidity, psychic 
instability, dual personality, compulsion-neuroses and other 
extremely neurotic phenomena. If the individual is con- 
genially equipped with a predominance of masculinity, a 
compensatory-process is set up to atone for insufficiencies or 
inferiorities. This masculine protest or compensatory-process 
is variously described as "unchecked aggression, activity, 
power, courage, freedom, compulsion-neuroses, wealth-striv- 
ing, attack, sadism, authority." On the other hand, if the 
individual is congenitally equipped with a predominance of 
femininity, a compensatory-process is set up towards feminini- 
ty, a feminine protest towards submission, love, passivity, 
masochism, obedience and compassion. Although the domi- 
nant tendency, whether masculine or feminine, asserts itself 
conspicuously, yet there reside in the character-complex latent 
remnants of the conquered tendencies which also occasionally 
assert themselves. This latter phenomenon is noticed pro- 
nouncedly in the study of eunuchs. Castration in the male 
appears to give the ascendency to hitherto latent feminine 
tendencies. Steinach of Vienna in his "Regeneration" gives 
some results of his experimental study of vasectomy in the 
male which indicates that feminine tendencies assert them- 
selves. Likewise ovariotomy or oophorectomy in the female 
gives the ascendency to hitherto latent masculine tendencies. 
The vast field of homosexuality studied by KrafTt-Ebing, 
Hirschfeld, Ellis and Moll more commonly furnishes examples 
of heterologous feminine and masculine tendencies within the 
bisexual monosexual. Such extreme psychosexual perver- 
sions are, to be sure, wholly within the field of morbid patholo- 
gy. The same considerations, limited, however, to normal 
individuals, reveal a struggling of sex-characters for masculine 
or feminine ascendency. Individuals falling within the 
domain of normality, however, are those possessed with 
heterosexual as opposed to homosexual inclinations. 



PSYCHOANALYSIS OF FREUD AND ADLER 11 

II 

The foregoing exposition has proven itself profitable if 
only the significance of its content for character-formation is 
gleaned. Character from the standpoint of psychodynamics 
has particular reference to those instinctive and emotional 
urges which constitute the very dynamo of a living organism. 
They not only condition all our responses, i. e., our activity, 
but, what is more, the very thoughts we shall think. 

What then are those instinctive and emotional urges? Re- 
duced to primordials, they are reproduction and hunger — 
primitively one. The reproductive instinct involves with the 
evolution of the two sexes the masculine urge and the feminine 
urge. The masculine urge is the will-to-power, to fight, to 
subdue, to make the most of self, the will to be a man ; and its 
accompanying emotions are hate, anger, revenge, jealousy and 
envy. The feminine urge, on the other hand, is love, spiritual 
love, maternal love, passivity, submission and compassion, 
the will to be a complete woman. Both urges spring out of 
the respective roles in the reproductive act. Federn, in par- 
ticular, attributes the energy-source, as well of all sadistic 
behavior as of all masochistic behavior, to a libidinous one. 
In this matter Federn is not by himself, for Sadger and Eulen- 
berg, special students of sadism and masochism, make the 
same claim. Sadism is the inclination to inflict pain to the 
beloved by beating, overcoming, torture and other means 
and is a masculine urge. On the other hand, masochism is 
the inclination to suffer pain from the beloved and is a feminine 
urge. These urges which find their primary importance in the 
reproductive act also find themselves very frequently sub- 
limated into activities and emotions somewhat removed from 
the primary function : sadism into conquest of wild beasts, of 
nature and of other men, aggressivity in general, love of self, 
self-maximation, revenge, will-to-power; masochism into love 
of children, of home life, social life and spiritual love and 
philanthropy, not to say anything of neurotic love-fixations 
and neurotic anxieties from unsatisfied love-propensities. 

The dynamic character of the individual is thus dependent 
upon the dominance of masculine or feminine constituents 
within the individual. Thus along the gamut of bisexual 
diatheses ranging from approximately absolute femininity to 
approximately absolute masculinity there may be grouped 
four general character- types, i. e., two subtypes under the 
male line and two subtypes under the female line. Thus 
follows a scheme of the four types with lists of comparative 
psychic characteristics : 



12 



PSYCHOANALYSIS OF FREUD AND ADLER 



MALE LINE 
No. 1 No. 2 

female-MALE FEMALE-male 



FEMALE LINE 

No. 3 No. 4 

MALE-female male-FEMALE 



Sadistic 
Aggressive 
Will-to- power 
Hate 

Ambitious to at- 
tain a goal 

Considers woman 
inferior — enemy 
of woman save 
as means to sex- 
gratification 



Differentiates self Would like to be 
from woman a woman 



Masochistic 

More passive 

Will-to-love 

Love 

Paterfamilias — 
goal of ambi- 
tion 

Lauds woman 



Sadistic 

Aggressive 

Will-to-power 

Hate 

Ambitious to at- 
tain a goal 



Masochistic 
More passive 
Will-to-love 
Love 

Family — goal 
ambition 



of 



Considers woman Lauds woman- 
inferior — ene- role 
my of woman 
role save as 
means to sex- 
gratification 

Differentiates self Would like to be 
from woman perfect woman- 
mother 



Superior in intel- 


■ Inferior intellect 


Superior intellect 


Inferior intellect 


lect 








Rational 


Intuitive 


Rational 


Intuitive 


More conscious 


More uncon- 


More conscious 


More uncon- 




scious 




scious 


Removed from 


Nearer youthful 


Removed from 


Nearer youthful 


youthful type 


type 


youthful type 


type 


Revengeful 


Forgiving 


Revengeful 


Forgiving 


Jealous 


Not jealous 


Jealous 


Not jealous 


Malevolent 


Benevolent 


Malevolent 


Benevolent 


Envious 


Charitable 


Envious 


Charitable 


Cruel 


Compassionate 


Cruel 


Compassionate 


Egoistic 


Social 


Egoistic 


Social 


Misanthropic 


Philanthropic 


Misanthropic 


Philanthropic 


Ungrateful 


Grateful 


Ungrateful 


Grateful 


Discourteous 


Courteous 


Discourteous 


Courteous 


Vain 


Modest 


Vain 


Modest 


Courageous 


Fearful 


Courageous 


Fearful 


Selfish 


Generous 


Selfish 


Generous 


Impenitent 


Penitent 


Impenitent 


Penitent 



The character-traits enumerated above are peculiar to the 
more masculine of the male and female lines ; and to the more 
feminine of the male and female lines. Thus underlying the 
psychological and moral character-traits of any individual are 
biological characters predisposing the individual to masculine 
or feminine tendencies. 

The four great psychological character-types above indi- 
cated correspond exactly to the four great biological character- 



PSYCHOANALYSIS OF FREUD AND ADLER 13 

types of bisexual humanity an account of which latter was 
given in Chapter I. 

No. 1 No. 2 No. 3 No. 4 

M 2 M x F 2 Fi 

For reasons to be seen in the following chapter, it is pref- 
erable to call these character- types thus: 

No. 1 No. 2 No. 3 No. 4 

Adlerian Male Freudian Male Adlerian Female Freudian Female 

after Adler and Freud, the two great founders of psycho- 
analysis whose doctrines of the neuroses open to us such a 
profound insight into the very psychological nature of these 
great character-types. 

Ill 

Question arises whether or not it would prove remunerative 
to throw the searchlight of psychoanalysis upon the lives of its 
very founders. Such an exploration, to be sure, would reveal 
a wealth of insight as regards the seemingly irreconcilable 
antagonism which exists between Freud and Adler. More 
than this, it would contribute a much needed correlation 
between their respective theories. In evidence of the above, 
the following considerations may lend some meager sug- 
gestions : 

Freud himself makes public in his " History of the Psy- 
choanalytic Movement" the irreconcilable antagonism which 
existed between Adler and himself, which in 1911 culminated 
in the former's actual withdrawal from the Freudian school 
and in the founding of a new school of his own. This last 
resort was reached only after much bitter personal antipathy, 
an example of which is immediately evidenced in the em- 
barrassing terms with which Adler once in the presence of the 
Psychoanalytic Society addressed Freud: "Do you believe 
it is such a great pleasure for me to stand in your shadow all 
my life?" From the inferior position of Freud's pupil, Adler 
independently arose to the commanding position of his hated 
rival. 

The fundamental nature of this seemingly irreconcilable 
"scientific antagonism" lay in the personal psychic nature 
of the two men, whom we may excellently study in their re- 
spective exteriorizations, i. e., in their respective doctrines of 
the neuroses. 

As a result of a long and painstaking experimenta- 
tion with psychotics and neurotics, Freud formulated his far- 
famed theory of the etiology and therapy of the psycho- 
neuroses. It must not be hastily assumed that Freud, in 
formulating his remarkable theory, ignored the labors of his 



14 PSYCHOANALYSIS OF FREUD AND ADLER 

predecessors in this field in whose work he had been schooled. 
He himself gives due credit to his masters, Breuer, Liebault, 
Bernheim and Charcot. It was upon the immediate instigation 
of Breuer, Chrobak and Charcot that Freud sought a deeper 
insight into the origin of the neuroses. He had early sensed 
the unusual stress these men laid upon the vita sexualis in the 
etiology of disorders not to be explained by the old physico- 
chemico-anatomical diagnosis. 

This strange sort of etiology was readily seized upon by 
Freud and investigated, with the result that he has given the 
world a well-shaped doctrine of the neuroses — one which is 
essentially based upon the sex-instinct and the inhibition of 
its function. It is very important for a comprehensive grasp 
of the Freudian viewpoint that one understand the significance 
both of sex-instinct and of its inhibition. 

1. Sex-instinct from the standpoint of the Freudian 
psychology is essentially comparable to the more philosophical 
vital urge labeled by Schopenhauer "the will-to-live" or by 
Bergson "elan vital." By Freud, however, it is considered 
more from a psychological aspect as the basal instinct of life, 
the vital creative dynamic which is working its way upward 
through organic matter, speaking in Bergsonian language. At 
once it looms much larger and more inclusive than the sex- 
instinct of common parlance. It comprehends hunger and 
sex as primarily identical and would embrace still other in- 
stinctive impulses and their accompanying emotions as 
partial impulses (Partialtriebe) which have become specialized 
and seemingly dissociated from the original sex impulse 
through psychic evolution. Let us quote Freud in this regard. 2 
"We reckon to the sexual life also all activities of tender 
feelings which have proceeded out of the spring of primitive 
sexual emotions, even if these emotions have experienced an 
inhibition of their originally sexual aim or have exchanged this 
aim for another less sexual. We use the word sexuality in the 
same inclusive sense as the German language uses the word 
lieben" 

It is thus that Freud sees fit to give to his sex-instinct, con- 
ceived as one big, imperative, creative, organic sex-wish, the 
more semi-vitalistic designation of "libido." As von Hart- 
mann conceived Schopenhauer's will-to-live as unconscious, 
so Freud conceives his libido as unconscious; and in addition 
it is governed solely by the pleasure-pain principle. 

2. The greatest obstacle to the joyful fruition of the 
libido is the cultural repression, chiefly moral, imposed from 

2 "Ueber 'wilde' Psychoanalyse." 1911. 



PSYCHOANALYSIS OF FREUD AND ADLER 15 

without. Thus, for Freud, consciousness, whose supreme 
task is to adjust the individual to the social milieu, acts as the 
psychic agent of repression and is called by him the reality- 
principle (Realitatsprinzip) . Here one sees an analogous 
relation between Bergson's creative elan vital pushing its way 
up through resisting matter in the organic realm and Freud's 
libido pushing up its way through the psychic hindrances 
imposed by consciousness in the psychic realm. The impedi- 
ments to the libido summed up in repression do not annihilate 
it but cause the mental disturbances grouped under the 
genus psychoneuroses as hysteria, anxiety-neuroses and so 
forth. 

Many psychic mechanisms have been improvised by the 
unconscious libido in order to overcome in its struggle with the 
inhibiting effects of consciousness, some few of which may be 
tabbed off as follows: 

1 . Sublimation — a process by means of which the repressed 
libido escapes the endopsychic censor of consciousness in the 
noble guise of a more refined impulse as spiritual love. 

2. Transposition of feeling, or ambivalency of emotions, 
where one emotion is transformed into its opposite, as es- 
pecially love into hate. 

3. Dreams, day-reveries, slips of the pen and tongue, 
unconscious word associations, infantilism, hysteria, sym- 
bolism, mysticism, religion, hypnotism, myth and the comic, 
all represent various channels of escape for the libido. 

The subconscious libido, according to Freud, has its own 
thought-life in many respects akin to Bergson's intuition, 
the affective thought and memory of Ribot, the Herbartian 
apperception, the autistic thinking of Bleuler. Ideas sensory 
and conscious in origin have infiltrated to the unconscious 
realm here somewhat akin to memory and are associated 
according to their affective value or libido-value (Herbart's 
interest?) into larger idea systems or Freudian constellations 
or complexes, a sort of fusion of libido and idea, making for 
their dynamic quality. The whole cannot be more nicely des- 
cribed than in the very language of Freud: "The wish is the 
father of the thought" which might be continued in the old 
phrase "The thought is father to the deed." This uncon- 
scious thought process follows the regular pleasure-pain 
principle, and the associations formed contrast strongly with 
the more conscious reality-logic. For example, the dream 
presents strikingly the mode of unconscious reasoning. 

Freud opens up a new vista in child psychology when he em- 
phasizes strenuously that "all neuroses have their foundations 
laid before the fifth year" and that "the infantile is the uncon- 



16 PSYCHOANALYSIS OF FREUD AND ADLER 

scious." The significance of these statements immediately 
becomes clear if it is assumed with Freud that the unconscious 
libido of early childhood is not yet repressed, by cultural or 
moral standards executed by consciousness, but that it has 
free spontaneous play. Later, when cultural standards impose 
themselves, the adolescent consciousness represses childhood 
strivings of the libido, leading to what Freud calls amnesia. 
The major unconscious complexes of childhood then are the 
Oedipus — and Electra-Complexes. The babe soon selects 
the parent of opposite sex as his or her favorite or love-object. 
The male child loves incestuously his mother, and the female 
child thus her father. Up until this time sex selection has 
been limited to the family circle. Even among the healthy- 
minded it is hard to become unattached from these infantile 
sexual fixations, and the subject is found later falling in love, 
he or she knows not how, with an extra-familial love-object 
which is the replica of the father or mother prototype. A 
great deal more difficult is the freeing at puberty when the 
fixated parent has unconsciously and unduly encouraged the 
attachment. The neurotic child must later find himself or 
herself incapable of freeing himself or herself from these 
infantile and incestuous sexual aims. While for the most part 
the sexual life of the child is latent, nevertheless it manifests 
itself in what Freud calls polymorphous perversity such as 
suckling, thumb-sucking, stimulation of erogenous zones, 
infantile masturbation, exhibitionism, narcissism, playing, 
springing, running, seeing, hearing, urinating, defecating, 
anal-eroticism, muscle-eroticism and thigh-friction. Retarda- 
tion at any one of these forms of libido-manifestation may 
lead to adult sexual perversion of a purely psychoneurotic 
type. 

Puberty is the period during which the sexual instinct comes 
to maturity. Along with the fuller pubescent awakening of 
the libido comes the more stern repression of it by conscious- 
ness to adjust the individual to the environment. The adoles- 
cent is now confronted with a more difficult struggle. Hy- 
pertrophied self-consciousness sets in, likewise an increase in 
dreaming. Around this period the adolescent may suffer 
sexual shocks or traumata; and if the nervous constitution 
has previously been oriented about the father or the mother 
in undue proportion, thereupon results a manifest flight 
from reality in hysterical attacks. A psychoanalyst or doctor 
may cure the patient of his or her disequilibration only to 
have the Ajffekt transferred from the mother or father to the 
physician. This transfer (Uebertragung) may continue from 
person to person, even to a sublimated suprapersonal love of 



PSYCHOANALYSIS OF FREUD AND ADLER 17 

God. It is in the directing of the love impulse to reality that 
Freud sees the panacea of all psychoneurotic maladies. 

Wholly another etiology Alfred Adler assigns to the psy- 
choneuroses. "The picture which one derives from Adler's 
system is founded entirely upon the impulse of aggression. 
It has no place at all for love. One might wonder that such a 
cheerless aspect of life should have received any notice what- 
ever ; but we must not forget that humanity oppressed by its 
sexual needs is prepared to accept anything if only the 'over- 
coming' of sexuality is held out as bait." The above quotation 
is from Freud 3 and does reasonable justice to the relative 
positions of the two men, notwithstanding the wake of sarcasm 
it carried with it. 

Adler, reducing the philosophy of Nietzsche to a psychology, 
makes of the will-to-power (Wille-zur-Macht) the basal instinct 
of life and primarily identical with the evolutionary nisus. 
Thus the will-to-live is equivalent to the will-to-power. The 
exuberance of life manifests itself in great deeds, and supreme- 
ly so in the lives and accomplishments of great men. 

Adler sees the genesis of the will-to-power instinct in sex 
and more specifically in the masculine sexual energy. Thus 
all masculine emotions, instincts, traits of character both 
psychic and physical represent the manifoldness of the will- 
to-power. In such a manner may be ascribed to the will-to- 
power all varieties of tendencies as the following: the ego- 
impulse (Ichtrieb), the aggression-impulse (Aggressionstrieb), 
the will-to-survive, the struggle for existence, the conquest 
of nature, cruelty, murder, sadism, war, selfishness, avarice, 
suspiciousness, envy, asceticism, self-love, the tendency to 
disparage others, the will to be leader, jealousy and revenge. 
This masculine urge encounters in its upward career through 
organic life various obstacles both organic and environic 
which it must overcome. The supreme obstacle is of an 
organic nature; and, as Adler shows at length, 4 organic deficien- 
cies or inferiorities as anomalies, especially such as of the 
palatal, conjunctival, pharyngeal and patellar reflexes, elicit 
the assertion of the will-to-power or the masculine protest 
to superiority. Environic obstacles which evoke the feeling 
of inferiority (Minderwertigkeitsgefiihl) are such as rank, 
morality, social esteem, birth and wealth. Here mechanisms 
must be resorted to by the will-to-power in order to overcome 
such as: 

1. Compensation, or that mechanism by which the will- 
to-power asserts itself through another channel than through 

3 " History of the Psychoanalytic Movement." 

4 "Studie ueber Minderwertigkeit von Organen." Berlin, 1907. 



18 PSYCHOANALYSIS OF FREUD AND ADLER 

the one blockaded. For example, an ugly person may com- 
pensate for this organic defect by psychic superiority {psy- 
chische M ehr lets tun g) . The compensation is always away 
from feelings of femininity towards feelings of masculinity; 
from weakness towards strength; from love towards hate; 
from passivity toward activity; from inferiority towards 
superiority; from below- towards above; from insecurity 
towards security. 

2. Security- tendency (Sicherungstendenz) . The neurotic 
of the Adlerian type sets a goal for his will-to-power, and this 
goal or guiding-idea becomes a refuge from reality. In the 
more neurotic individual these goals are but neurotic fiction 
without much regard for reality and actual attainment. 
The more accentuated fiction orients about the maximation 
of self and resembles the delusions of grandeur in paranoia 
and dementia precox. The neurotic sets out upon his or her 
"historic mission." The inability to act out this fiction 
results in the bankruptcy of the "mission." The neurotic 
collapse frequently culminated in insanity or suicide is but 
the dirge of a smattered ambition. 

At several crises in life, feelings of inferiority are strongly 
elicited as at menstruation, the epoch of menstrual activity, 
the epoch of sexual activity, pregnancy, puerperium, climac- 
teric, examinations, danger of death, stage of fitness for 
marriage. At such crises the masculine energy if possessed 
in any degree seeks to assert itself. 

Adler sees in the right-directing of the aggressive will-to- 
power (egoistic) impulse to reality a panacea of all psycho- 
neurotic maladies. 

IV 

Into the theoretical antagonism between these two doc- 
trines of the neuroses enters significantly the personal equa- 
tion. That is to say, the two great founders are themselves 
complementary in character-type. This explanation has 
already been intimated not only by Freud and Adler them- 
selves but also by Rudolph Reitler, Paul Federn, Carl Jung 
and Alphonse Maeder. The present paper will merely 
suggest the bisexual nature of the above-mentioned com- 
plementariness between Freud and Adler. 

To understand the psychoneurotic constitutions of Freud 
and Adler is to become at once acquainted with the masculine 
and feminine principles. On this point Freud and Adler 
themselves are much in accord, if we may rely upon the 
suggestions which emanate from their respective statements. 



/ 



PSYCHOAXALYSIS OF FREUD AND ADLER 19 

Thus Adler writes 5 that every nascent constitution has latent 
within it both sadistic and masochistic components. Heredity 
and environment determine which of the two components 
shall be evoked and shall predominate in the individual's 
life. Masochism in his estimation is equivalent to the feminine 
Sexualtrieb, i. e., to the Freudian diathesis; sadism to the 
masculine Aggressionstrieb, i. e., to the Adlerian diathesis. 

On the other hand, Freud 6 has come to the same general 
conclusion. Thus he writes: "The picture which one derives 
from Adler's system is founded entirely upon the impulse of 
aggression. It has no place at all for love." The same chord 
is struck when Freud" retrenches in admitting that the be- 
ginnings of hate, of aggressivity, go back in the psychogenetic 
scale very far, and hate is as strong if not stronger than love. 
Provided we assume each NeurosenJehre as the unconscious 
exteriorization, projection or expression of its founder's inner 
psychic life, we are privileged to probe the deeper psychic 
constitution of the respective men by use of their theories. 

Sigmund Freud has given us no factual history of his life 
save in a few personal references. These latter relate to his 
Jewish extraction, his pacifistic tendencies in counterdis- 
tinction to the Teutonic aggressivity in the late World War, 
and his extreme sexual-mindedness as evidenced throughout 
his theory of the neuroses and which strikingly countenances 
the strong sexuality attributed racially to the Jewish male. 

More striking for the present paper, however, are the sym- 
bolic self-revelations of his feminine inclinations in his "neu- 
rotic fiction," i. e., his theory of the neuroses. For convenience 
the projections of his mixed soul of predominantly feminine 
inclinations may be tabbed off as follows: 

1. Outstanding is his primary emphasis upon woman, 
das eivig-Weibliche. His experimentation is for the most 
part confined to woman, with whose soul he has an innate 
sympathetic rapport. This inner Einfithlung into woman-soul 
is peculiar to his own constitution, i. e., he himself in psychic 
life is predominantly woman or womb-man, to use the Anglo- 
Saxon word. On the other hand, his theory which has such 
great significance for our knowledge of the feminine psychic 
life gives but secondary importance to the masculine soul. 
For him masculinity exists only as a repressing agent or as a 
subsidiary completion of woman. The Freudian man is a 

5 Adler's "Zur Kritik der Freudschen Sexualtheorie der Nervositat," 
Heilen und Bilden, 1911, and " Der Aggressionstrieb im Leben und in 
der Neurose," ibid. 

'"Zur Geschichte der psychoanalytischen Bewegung." 1914. 

7 "Zeitgemasses ueber Krieg und Tod," Imago, 1915. 



20 PSYCHOANALYSIS OF FREUD AND ADLER 

parasite upon woman, to whom he owes his very existence. 
This matter of male parasitism is couched nicely in the follow- 
ing by Belfield: "For in many animal types there is no male; 
when he does appear he is at first merely a parasite upon or 
within the body of the female." On such a level the male 
lives only for the female and has not evolved to such a stage 
that he lives for himself. 

Here Freud agrees with the conclusion of Bucura over 
sex-differences that the female sexual impulse is primary; 
the masculine secondary. The female's supreme biological 
mission orients about reproduction, which mission is fulfilled 
through sexuality. In the words of the Middle Ages, ''Woman 
is the priestess of sexuality." 

In this entire matter Freud belongs to the type of men 
Fourier describes: "qui sont femmes par la tete et par la 
coeur." He is allied with the feminine soul. He is an instance 
to bear out the statement of Th. Gautier: ''It often happens 
that the sex of the soul does not at all correspond with that 
of the body, and this is a contradiction which cannot fail to 
produce great disorder." 3 

2. There naturally grows out of the preceding his strong 
emphasis upon love, a paramount feminine sentiment. Here 
Freud is at one with Madame de Stael when she wrote that 
"Love, which is an episode in the life of man, is the entire 
history of woman"; likewise with Byron, who has phrased it 
thus, "Love in man's life is a thing apart; in woman's life 
her whole existence." 

Again, Freud closely associates hunger with love, two very 
interrelated elements in the feminine nature — nutrition and 
reproduction. 

According to Adler, who follows the great sex-psychopa- 
thologists, Moll, Krafft-Ebing, Hirschfeld and Ellis, love is 
masochistic and feminine, while hate and aggression are 
sadistic and masculine. These psychological traits are sus- 
tained by the findings of Blair Bell and Bucura that masculini- 
ty is characterized by domination and certainty while feminini- 
ty is characterized by passivity and hesitancy. Otto Weinin- 
ger attributes to masculinity the "liberating" impulse and to 
femininity the "uniting" impulse. Even Freud describes 
the masculine impulse, for him centripetally oriented about 
the erection of the male genital, as a dark impulse to mighty 
action, to penetrate, to dash to pieces, elsewhere to tear 
open a hole. But even this is the beginning of the aggressivity 
of which Adler writes and which Freud condemns as leaving 
no place for love. 

s Theophile Gautier's "Mademoiselle de Maupin." 



PSYCHOANALYSIS OF FREUD AND ADLER 21 

Only in so far as a man is feminine, i. e., possesses a feminine 
emotional life, is he able to love. For Freud the great regenera- 
tive force is love, which is excellently illustrated in his study 
of Jensenn's "Gradiva." 

3. Countless anxieties and fears peculiarly group them- 
selves about the feminine psyche : anxieties about the realiza- 
tion of the love life, and about the many partial impulses of 
love as tender feeling, maternal love, sociality, the Musiktrieb, 
the Tanztrieb, the home instinct, the love of the beautiful, the 
sentiment d'incompletude, religious love, timidity, morality, 
her organic and functional nature, the children and her male 
companion of whom she would like to be the mother. 

In the words of Ovid, "Love is a thing full of anxious fears." 
Thus the neurotic fiction of Freud unmasks to us these many 
fears and anxieties of his male-female soul. 

4. The prominence given the womb in the Freudian 
theory at once reveals the strong feminine strain within his 
soul. Characteristic of Freud is it to emphasize the womb 
as whence one comes and whither one is ever striving to re- 
turn. It is the security goal of man. The primary biological 
function is that of the womb, the matrix of humanity. Thus 
in the hindrances to its function along the path of life lie all 
of human, alike male and female, neurotic struggles, accord- 
ing to Freud. Even in this matter of the eternal longing for 
the mother and for return to the womb Freud portrays the 
original parasitism of man upon or within woman. The 
longing for the mother in itself is a confession of femininely 
inclined masculinity in somewhat the sense as the popular 
language speaks of a mama's boy as one who is dependent on 
the mother and who has not enough masculinity to assert his 
individuality, his independence. 

The womb is synonymous with femininity. Helmont of old 
phrased it: "Propter uterum solum mulier est quod est." 
The ancient Greeks saw in hysteria an affection produced 
by the unsatisfied womb, the inability to be a complete, 
genuine woman. Maeder in an article entitled "Ueber Zwei 
Frauentypen" points out the clitoris- and womb-types of 
women. The clitoris- type is already manifesting a strong 
Einschlag of masculinity, therefore is of the Adlerian diathesis. 
The clitoris-type can aid repression by the easy transformation 
or sublimation of the female sex-impulse into masculine 
aggressivity. This Backfisch would like most to be a boy; 
she dreams later very often thereof. She loves sport, hunting; 
she is passionate, violent, aggressive and enterprising. The 
womb-type woman, on the other hand, represents the ap- 
proximation to the absolute woman or Freudian type. With 



22 PSYCHOANALYSIS OF FREUD AND ADLER 

her the maternal instinct is strong. For us the womb-phan- 
tasy of Freud represents his symbolic effort to identify 
with woman the unearthing of his dual sex-nature with stress 
upon femininity. 

5. In the matter of infantilism we also have a splendid 
apocalypse of his mixed soul. Symbolically the child repre- 
sents undifferentiated sexuality in which both masculine 
and feminine, both active and passive, impulses alternately 
function. This a-sex-ensemble is attributed to the infantile 
by the folk-soul in the neuter gender of words, as Das Kind, 
to nepion. This is also strongly emphasized in Freud's idea 
of infantile polymorphous perversity in which thumbsucking, 
suckling, stimulation of erogenous zones, muscle-, skin-, 
anal-, mouth-, mucous membrane-eroticisms play a great 
role. Polymorphous perversity is symbolic of Freud's charac- 
terological melange of femininity and masculinity. Rosen- 
stein, speaking of bisexuality, writes in aphoristic form: 
"Der Mensch ist seiner Anlage nach polymorph pervers." 

It is before the fifth year that the individual Sexualrichtung 
takes place. The dominant sexual character of femininity 
or of masculinity manifests itself. Whether masculine or 
feminine, this dominant sexuality is always accompanied by 
the recessive sexuality. Thus love and hate exist together 
in each individual. 

Adler sees a compensation-correlation of inferiority to 
superiority between the infantile and the adult, between the 
feminine and the masculine, weakness and strength, which cor- 
relation is equivalent to equating the infantile to the feminine 
to weakness. The infantile is nearer to the feminine and 
therefore nearer to the womb and the phyletic. In this light 
is seen somewhat of the significance of the adage: "The child 
is father to the man." Symbolically the infantile represents 
Freud's weakness, his femininity, his bisexual nature. 

From yet another standpoint the love of children is peculiar 
to femininity. There is no such thing as paternal love, says 
Dr. Kinkle. What we call paternal love is only the maternal 
love in man, owing to his bisexual nature. 

6. Freud's major complexes, the Oedipus — and Electra- 
Complexes, are exteriorizations of the duality of love and hate 
constellations, or the duality of masculine and feminine prin- 
ciples within him. He can hate only in order to love; he can 
be man only in order to be a part of woman. These complexes 
formed before the fifth year are upon further sex-differentia- 
tion indicative of the co-existence of both masculine and 
feminine principles within the individual, whether predomi- 
nantly masculine or predominantly feminine. 



PSYCHOANALYSIS OF FREUD AND ADLER 23 

7. Repression, which plays so important a role in the 
Freudian doctrine, is highly symbolic of the femininity in his 
make-up. Rudolph Reitler sees in Adlerian masculinity the 
emphasis upon the repressing (Das Verdrangende) ; in the 
Freudian femininity the emphasis upon the repressing (Das 
Verdrdngt). Over against the masculine expressivity is the 
feminine impressivity. Freud in giving prominence to re- 
pression reveals the feminine component of his psychic con- 
stitution. He feels as a woman, i. e., he feels repressed. In 
other words he feels the repression by the masculine within 
him, the repressing tendency of the Ego. In his exterioriza- 
tion of repression he portrays his own mixed soul. 

8. The emphasis upon the phyletic which is extradited in 
his theory of the neuroses is indicative of the femininity within 
him. Woman is nearer to the phyletic, the racial; she is the 
great eugenic force. Her supreme biological mission is of 
primary importance for the preservation of the race, an end 
for which masculinity and all other aims are of secondary 
consideration. 

9. The unconscious again is representative of femininity in 
Freud's bisexual diathesis. His stress upon the subconscious 
points to his feminine Einfilhlung. The supreme biological 
mission of woman is the deeper unconscious will-to-live of the 
race. Bucura indicates as a sex-difference that woman is 
more unconscious than man, that is, she is more instinctive or 
intuitive while man is more conscious and rational. Man 
is more the guardian or protector of woman, of the uncon- 
scious feminine. The deeper unconsciousness of the feminine 
soul is evidenced in the greater liability to clairvoyance, 
clairaudience, hysterical phenomena and hypnotism. 

Some writers, especially Dr. G. Stanley Hall, see a difference 
between the Freudian and Adlerian theories amounting to a 
correlation between the Freudian feminine phyletic uncon- 
sciousness and the Adlerian masculine ontogenetic conscious- 
ness. Of course there is some of both elements in every 
individual with a predominance of the one or the other. 
With Freud it is, to be sure, a predominance of feminine 
unconsciousness. 

10. Tender emotionality is predominantly emphasized 
by Freud. He has a horror of aggression, except in so far as 
subservient to tender emotion — a characteristic of femininity 
according to Bucura and Heymann. 

If the psychology of the emotions and instincts be accord- 
ing to the masculine and feminine principles dichotomized 
into negative and positive, active and passive, or masculine 



24 PSYCHOANALYSIS OF FREUD AND ADLER 

and feminine, the affectivity and impulsivity would require a 
classification of him more on the feminine side. 

According to James's tough and tender-minded types, Freud 
belongs more to the tender-minded type. 

11. The artistic impulse, the love of the beautiful, is 
strikingly portrayed in Freud's literary style and in the 
literary artistic lives and works which he analyzes. This 
literary-artistic impulse is peculiar to men of strong feminine 
admixture, as consistently observed by characterological 
psychologists. The question is raised that so few women have 
produced literary and artistic products. A tentative answer 
might be advanced that women incarnate beauty and love but 
do not possess enough of masculine energy to express it on 
paper or canvas, as writing as well as painting belongs some- 
what to the active life. Whatever efforts have been made by 
women in the literary-artistic world have been made by the 
more masculine women. On the other hand, the feminine man 
possesses the proper mixture of love of beauty and activity 
to execute it upon paper or canvas. Too masculine men find 
art too delicate an activity. Nietzsche points out this differ- 
ence among his supermen and calls the less masculine the 
Apollonian and the more active the Dionysian. The latter 
type is the preference of Nietzsche as superman. An interest- 
ing distinction is made by Carl Jung in his "Psychologie der 
unbewussten Prozesse," where he divides men into the in- 
travert or thinking type and the extravert or feeling type. 
He classifies Freud in the extravert type and Adler in the 
intra vert type. In his "Psychology of the Unconscious," 
Jung holds that the literary-artistic product is the fancy 
child of the mind — cherished with all the maternal love that 
an actual mother can bestow upon her own child — a phantas- 
tical vicariate of the actual product of maternity. 

12. Finally needs be cited his classic phrase, "Perversion 
is the negative of neurosis," which conveys information of his 
own psychophysical disposition, namely, that he must not be 
classed with those so perverted in their sexual inclinations as 
to be called homosexual. Although his bisexual nature bears 
a feminine stress, he is still heterosexual in his inclinations. 

The value accruing to the above self-revelations of Freud's 
own inner life rests mainly upon its bisexual nature. His 
life presents the struggle of masculine and feminine psychic 
forces with a predominance of femininity. He would assert 
the masculine protest, but the feminine which is stronger 
within him would incline him to the feminine protest. He 
would be a woman and true to his deeper nature because 
of the predominance of the woman-soul within him. Freud 



PSYCHOANALYSIS OF FREUD AXD ADLER 25 

is a man who presents the entire emotional life of a feminine 
diathesis: he has a complete Einfuhlung or inner co-experience 
with feminine existence, an unquenchable impulse to be a 
woman, to conceive, to give birth, to experience the joys of 
maternity as in the case of the primitive couiade-pratice 
which he analyzes. In short, he knows how it feels to be a 
woman. This indelible feminine " disponierende Anlage" 
of his constitution breaks forth in his theory of the neuroses. 
For such a feminine diathesis, all repression, all feeling of 
incompleteness, are monistically condensed into the obstruc- 
tion of the love-impulse, of the feminine eugenic force. How- 
ever, from the functional side he cannot be an actual woman. 
although from the feeling side he can. This at once brings 
to the fore again the sexual duality of his soul. He plays a 
double role of man and woman. He acts like a man and 
feels like a woman: he is both subject and object. In his 
inability to become woman functionally, he is left free to 
sympathize with her and to doctor her ills. For him. love is a 
regenerative force — a resurrection of the phyletic. i. e.. of 
woman's supreme biological mission — a spiritual recreation 
of man in woman. 

Freud, true to the feminine soul, is of the tender-minded 
type which indulges in the delicate significance of love-dreams, 
artistic productions, symbolic language, the sexually comic 
and phantastical. the eternal feminine, the eternal infantile. 
For him the infantile < the feminine > is the unconscious. 

The greater the repression of the feminine love-impulse, the 
greater the intensity of the love-energy and the sublimation 
or refinement of the impulse and the more delicate the erotic 
symbolism and autistic thought processes. Sadger draws 
attention to the fact that increase of sadistic impulse on the 
one hand increases correspondingly the masochistic impulse 
on the other. The same phenomena may take place all within 
the one individual of bipolar sexuality. Repression is sadistic, 
and with its increase comes the intensification of the love 
impulse and the erotic psychoses. For Freud the complex 
of the repressing and the repressed is strong, i. e.. within him 
is the sado-masochistic complex with stress upon the maso- 
chism. 

By way of parallel to Freud in many respects is the life 
of Jesus Christ, a Jew. who when his people were oppressed 
by the more virile Romans, in a sublimated spiritual sense. 
proclaimed himself the savior of man. and who in the Freudian 
sense revolted against his father and rescued his mother. 
In a highly sublimated sense he exteriorized a Kingdom 
Come from the prototype of his mother's womb to which he 



26 PSYCHOANALYSIS OF FREUD AND ADLER 

unconsciously longed to return. This incestuous longing or 
love sublimated to charity is the keynote of the Christian 
doctrine of salvation which to the masculine Nietzsche appears 
the religion of humility, of compassion, of inferiority, of 
femininity. The Christian faith, an incorporation of feminine 
intuitions, is that of sublime love with a morality of turn-the- 
other-cheek and that of which the chief virtues are faith, 
hope and charity, all of which judged in the light of the 
bisexual principle are essentially feminine and masochistic 
character-traits. A striking observation of the religious 
psychologists is that the Christian religion has more followers 
by far among the female sex. 

The conversation between Christ and Nicodemus brings 
out in bold relief the impossibility of entering the Kingdom 
Come without being born again, without entering the mother's 
womb again in spirit rather than in flesh. Interesting again 
by way of parallel is the tender quasi-maternal love of Christ 
for children. His own much quoted words in this matter are 
in Matthew 18:3-6: 

"Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become 
as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of 
heaven. 

"Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little 
child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. 

"And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name, 
receive th me. 

"But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which 
believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were 
hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the 
depth of the sea." 

The same feminine strivings of Jesus Christ are they which 
predispose Freud. ■ 

It would hardly be amiss here to make some mention of 
Carl J. Jung, leader of the Swiss school of psychoanalysis. 
He has very much in common with Freud, differing only in 
his greater feminine tendency. In his neurotic fiction or his 
psychoanalytic theory he places even greater emphasis upon 
the unconscious, reverting to the deepest strata of the soul, 
the primal roots of food and fertility, called by him the col- 
lective or superpersonal unconscious — the very soul of the 
race or of woman. Thus it is he who has elaborated the 
mother-complex or the womb-complex. All neurotic struggle 
thus reduces itself to the longing to return to the womb — 
the security goal of man. In his analysis of the Freudian 
and Adlerian character-types into extravert or feeling-type 
and introvert or thinking-type, one without much perplexity 



PSYCHOANALYSIS OF FREUD AND ADLER 27 

can readily see that Jung himself belongs to the feeling type — 
the Freudian type which inclines toward the feminine, the 
intuitive, and which recognizes the primordiality of affectivity. 

Alfred Adler, likewise, has given us no traditional biography. 
Only here and there are gleaned important references to his 
personal life. Undoubtedly the incident which reveals to us a 
most significant insight into his psychoneurotic constitution 
is his personal antagonism to Freud. It will not be assumed 
that Adler was entirely masculine. He also possessed a 
bisexual diathesis but one in which masculinity was the 
dominant character. Adler as a student of Freud revolted 
against him and gave birth to his own theory of the neuroses 
in which aggression, masculinity and the will-to-power con- 
spicuously feature. Diametrically opposed to the femininity 
of the Freudian doctrine is the masculine emphasis in the 
Adlerian theory. 

Adler, endowed by heredity with pronounced strains of 
Teutonic virility, could not by nature bear subordination 
to the feminism of Freud. His neurotic fiction, i. e., his 
doctrine of the neurotic disposition, is an exteriorization of 
his own inner life. Adler is by no means as kryptic and 
symbolic in the projection of his inner psychoneurotic life. 
In his doctrine he portrays with no concealment his masculine 
tendency. The sexual duality of his nature is portrayed 
by him in his continual emphasis upon such dualisms as 
masculine-feminine, adult-infantile, strong-weak, active-pas- 
sive, hate-love, aggressivity-passivity, superior-inferior, above- 
below, sadistic-masochistic, healthy-sick. In Adler himself 
there exists the prototype of this bipolarity of masculinity 
and femininity or of this sado-masochistic complex. Between 
the two poles there is working a compensation process — a will- 
to-power — the assertion of the masculine protest. In other 
words, from a bisexual standpoint we may speak of Adler as 
a Man-Woman. The man in him is in the predominance 
through heredity. This masculinity expresses itself in a will 
to differentiate itself from the woman in him, the will to 
assert masculine autonomy, to be above, to be a genuine man 
(Vollmann), the neurotic struggle of the Ichtrieb. 

Adler recognizes that the masculine and feminine principles 
originally were of a hermaphroditic source (in micro-organic 
realm) and that the two principles which now correspond 
roughly to male and female of the species are fundamentally 
evolving along different lines. This primitive hermaphro- 
ditism is recapitulated in each individual, i. e., each individual 
is a psychosexual hermaphrodite or psychosexual pseudoher- 



28 PSYCHOANALYSIS OF FREUD AND ADLER 

maphrodite. He sees in the masculine principle aggressive- 
ness, will-to-power, Ichtrieb, sadism, hate, all of which he him- 
self incarnates. 

Organic inferiority as well as general feeling of inferiority, 
both of which are given a great deal of prominence in his 
theory, represent the horror of being a woman, of being 
less than a genuine man. It is a revolt from the parasitism 
within or upon the female to autonomous development. For 
man to be deficient in his organic mechanism is to be like 
woman and forces him back to a primitive level of being a 
subsidiary completion of woman or to be dependent upon her, 
hence a dread of organic inferiority. The predominance of 
masculinity over femininity in the bisexual character-complex 
issues in the masculine protest, the compensatory will-to- 
power. Adler holds that the organ inferiority pushes back 
its source to the sexual apparatus and thus to heredity. In 
this manner he attributes inferiority to a return to the like- 
ness of woman. The masculinity within him will atone for 
such foetal or prenatal insufficiencies. Psychically or function- 
ally he will compensate for somatic defects with being superior. 
He will be "above," will be the man behind the throne, he 
will make history as a security goal. 

A parallel to Adler is in the neurotic life of the Anti-Christ, 
Nietzsche, who glorified the superman, extreme individualism, 
the eternal masculine, the will-to-power and the sadistic 
morality of might makes right. 

The literary style of Adler is rugged and masculine as com- 
pared with that of Freud. He is blunt, and his lines burst 
forth with anger and hate, according to Freud's estimation. 
The analysis of literary-artistic subjects is rare indeed with 
Adler. 

Adler, true to the masculine principle, is of the tough- 
minded type which indulges in selfish reveries of power, hate, 
revenge, self -maxi mat ion, sadism, reality-thinking and activ- 
ity. The unconscious does not occupy so important a place 
in the masculine diathesis as with woman, whose orientation 
is almost entirely inward and downward to the organic. On 
the other hand, the masculine impulse is always oriented 
upward and outward toward conflict, with external stimuli 
involving the higher mentation. Man is the superstructure 
of woman. 

Extremely significant are the contrasted types of women 
with which Freud and Adler respectively deal. Only women 
of a strong masculine diathesis are those who fall under the 
analysis of Adler. They are women who would be men and 
who are, to be sure, masculinely constituted physically as 



PSYCHOANALYSIS OF FREUD AND ADLER 29 

well as psychically. Such women number among themselves 
those called militant, those called courtesans and vampires, 
those who, Joan-like, hold masculine positions, who refuse 
marriage and the role of motherhood, those who strongly be- 
lieve themselves the equal of men and even vie with him in 
physical as well as mental endeavors and finally those whom 
Magnus Hirschfeld in his "Die Transvestiten " and Have- 
lock Ellis in his article "Sexo-aesthetic Inversion" describe 
as ambitious to become man-like in the matter of wearing 
apparel as well as of bobbed hair. Wherever masculine 
tendencies are struggling for expression in either sex, there/ 
we see a fitting application of the Adlerian analysis. 

Psychoanalysis has reiterated the sayings of the Scriptures 
that, as a man thinketh, so is he; or judge not that you be not 
judged, in that the thought of a man is an unconscious ex- 
teriorization or self-projection. Why then should it not be 
perfectly legitimate to judge Adler by his theory as a bisexual 
with masculine strivings in the ascendency? 

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30 PSYCHOANALYSIS OF FREUD AND ADLER 

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